I pushed onto my knees and swiped my muddy hands on my pants. “Disdain.”
He gazed down his dripping nose at me. Dark eyes, cruel eyes. “Deeper. Stronger.”
My racing heart gave a painful thud. I knew the emotion—knew it better than I wanted to. It had moved his hand, had thrust cold metal into the bodies of changelings. I’d seen him wearing that face while the sky shone green behind him, while everyone I knew screamed and ran and died.
All at once, this didn’t feel like an exercise in magic.
My hands clenched; Dorian’s eyes flicked down to the movement and back up. “Name it,” he said.
I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t give him that.
“Name it.” His hand flicked, and the rain buffeted my face. I shut my eyes and hated it and didn’t speak. “You know what you feel, Eury.”
I did. But I refused to give him what he wanted. I’d rather be afraid. I’d rather beanythingbut what I knew waited inside me.
Wind punched me in the chest, and I was on my back before my eyes had even opened. The tall grass rose around me, and beyond it the gray sky. Rain hit my face, ran into my nostrils, andI hated him.
Kidnapper. Killer for hire. Murderer.
My mother was dead because ofhim.
I didn’t feel myself move so much as my veins sang with scornful life. Didn’t realize I was on my feet and charging him until I leapt. I wrapped my legs around him as the two of us went down.
If I’d had a knife, it would be in my hand. Hell, if I had a chair leg I’d be swinging it.
Here she was, the creature inside me.
I wasn’t a queen or even a changeling. Not fae, not human, not woman. I was just Eury of the streets. Eury of the mud. Eury the cheek-biter. She didn’t care how big her opponent was, or how many, or her odds?—
She only fought. Fought and won.
I straddled him, raised my shaking fist. I would dash his face in. I would pummel him until he was no longer Dorian but the same pulp of man who’d dared to bringitout of me.
He was the boy who’d shoved my face into the mud while he sat atop me. He was Theo’s bully, thinking because Theo was small and I was a girl he could go on punching Theo in the belly whenever he saw that red hair. He was the four guard in the bunkhouse, each of them holding one limb like those limbs belonged to them.
Fuck that. Fuck them.
I would show them, and keep showing them, what it felt like to be small.
And yet…
I stared down at Dorian and couldn’t make my arm move.
A drop of rain had hit his forehead… and steam rose from it. That unmissable scent entered my nose—and the instinct to find cover.Acid.Rain in the acid, and acid in the rain.
Acid rain had fallen on Dorian’s face.
I’d done it. I’d called on magic. But this time I’d touched it not with fear for my life, but the opposite. And this feeling was far easier to access than fear.
Vaelen’s bleeding sky, hatred feltgood.It felt like power. It felt just like that night, except the grass had been soft bedding and I’d been the one looking up at him from the cage of his arms.
He stared up at me, jaw waiting. He’d take the blow my hand shook to deliver. He wouldn’t fight, wouldn’t blink away. And though one part of me longed to destroy him, another part of me was aware of every part of me touching him. My thighs, my ass, my?—
I rolled off him and onto my back in the grass. Above me, the clouds had taken on a familiar green hue. The wet sting on my face felt like home, felt like victory.
“Spite,” I whispered. “The feeling is spite.”
CHAPTER EIGHT